* Report accuses Kosovo PM of heading mafia-style group
* Next step should be formal investigation - author says
* Kosovo gov't denies accusations, threatens legal action
PARIS, Dec 17 (Reuters) - A draft European report accusing Kosovo's leader of heading a mafia-style organisation involved in arms and drug trafficking should spur a formal investigation and set in motion a "dynamic of truth", its author said.
Dick Marty, who led the two-year effort to uncover alleged crimes committed by Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, acknowledged there was a scarcity of physical evidence but said it would be the task of judicial investigators to unearth this.
"I think we have delivered enough material to justify finally an investigation which goes deeper, is more serious and independent and, above all, creates the conditions for witnesses to speak," Marty told a news conference in Paris.
This report "can set in motion a dynamic of truth and that could really change things... We cannot continue with these suspicions," he said after a meeting at the Council of Europe office in Paris.
Marty's report accuses Thaci of being the boss of an organised crime ring during the Kosovo Albanian guerrilla war against Serbia in the late 1990s that assassinated opponents, trafficked in drugs and organs harvested from murdered Serbs and committed other crimes. [ID:nLDE6BD2AY]
It was due to be adopted by the judiciary and human rights commission of the Council of Europe on Thursday.
Only one of its conclusions -- citing criminal activity by certain chiefs of the former Kosovo Liberation Army ethnic militia -- will be voted upon.
Kosovo's EU justice mission said on Wednesday it would examine the conclusions of the draft report, as opposition politicians rallied behind Thaci. [ID:nLDE6BE0VW]
The Kosovo government has rejected the report, calling it defamatory and threatening legal and political action. (Reporting by Nicholas Vinocur; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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